Longer description of your proposed project

Georgism involves pushing tax burden onto land and land-like assets, and away from areas such as income, commerce, and property improvements. Removing the disincentive to build improvements could lower the cost of housing and improve the efficiency of the overall economy.

Our organization will be contacting local assessors, local politicians, state legislators, the federal government, and other officials as necessary to determine opportunities for Georgist policy gains. We plan to leverage recent successes, such as in the city of Detroit.

This 501(c)(4) will push for the actual legislation to make Georgism a reality. Currently, ValueBase has the ability to assess land and provide information to inform policymakers of the immediate consequences of their proposals, like how many people’s taxes would change and by how much. 501(c)(3)s such as Schalkenbach provide the intellectual and theoretical underpinning for Georgism via their research. However, these groups do not have the resources or the legal ability to directly push for legislation.

Georgism currently has the advantage of having elements that appeal to both sides of the political spectrum. It also has the advantage of flexibility - while fully replacing all other taxes with a land tax may be unrealistic in the short term, a small or gradual increase in taxes on land would still improve the fiscal efficiency, and would not represent a major upheaval to the vast majority of taxpayers.

Georgism is the rare policy these days that does not suffer from stink of being a liberal or conservative policy - it is a “good government” endeavor. It will be important to use the flexibility to try and achieve small gains if necessary. It could be that a change in statute or ordinance is infeasible, but merely convincing a local assessor to correctly assess land (as opposed to a status-quo below-market assessment) could still be an important step.

Describe why you think you're qualified to work on this

I am currently finishing 5 years as the State Assessor of Alaska, leaving the position to work on this project full-time. Being State Assessor involved speaking with local assessors, elected officials, and citizens about property tax law. I became a general-purpose expert on local taxation in Alaska, publishing the Alaska Taxable each year and speaking at the Alaska Municipal League. I also have several years of experience as a legislative aide in the Alaska State Legislature. While there, by coincidence, I worked on the legislation that likely makes Georgist policies legal in Alaska. I understand that I will be asking politicians to embrace a fairly radical change. My experience has given me great insight into what policies work and what scares people.

As for my background, I have a BA, double-majored in economics and chemistry at Amherst College, and a JD from the University of Virginia, focused on tax law. I briefly looked into becoming an actuary and passed the first three exams within a year. I have the technical ability to understand the nuances of tax policy, combined with experience in tax law, and an ability to explain these policies at any level of sophistication. I am also personally passionate about the opportunity to push for a rare policy free lunch.

Finally, I am going to be working full time on this project; I am leaving my comfortable government job with seven weeks of annual leave, alternate Fridays off, and all federal holidays, to pursue this because I believe success in this area will have massive positive impacts on the world. I will be working with an excellent team, the founders of ValueBase, Lars Doucet and Will Jarvis. When elected officials need reassurance, the ValueBase team is ready to provide excellent data to give them the landscape of who will be impacted by our proposed policies. Lars and Will also have excellent connections among assessors, government leaders, and sources of additional funding.

Other ways I can learn about you

Twitter: @jacaissie

Publication: Alaska Taxable https://www.commerce.alaska.gov/web/Portals/4/pub/OSA/taxable%20reports/2022%20Alaska%20Taxable%20Report.pdf

How much money do you need?

$100K will fund my work for roughly one year. Financially, this will help to leverage more fund-raising for lobbying efforts. The goal is to work in many jurisdictions, using the contacts that ValueBase has developed, and forming new ones. Any policy campaign could spend infinite resources, but the goal is to maintain a lean operation at first. Lars Doucet and Will Jarvis are personally seeding this effort with $15,000.

Links to any supporting documents or information

No response.

Estimate your probability of succeeding if you get the amount of money you asked for

70% chance of success in early policy targets

20% chance of early successes snowballing, leading to massive policy change